The evidence on anchor babies

Speaking of research desk, a reader e-mailed to ask whether we have any actual evidence on the prevalence of "anchor babies" -- children born in the United States so that their foreign parents have a fast path to citizenship.When people hear about anchor babies, they assume the parents of these tiny citizens get automatic citizenship. Not quite. The parents of these tiny citizens might get citizenship -- but it'll take more than 30 years. Politifact explains:

It's important to note that having an "anchor baby" won't do much to help a Mexican mom become a U.S. citizen. Because citizen children cannot sponsor their parents for citizenship until they turn 21 -- and because if the parents were ever illegal, they would have to return home for 10 years before applying to come in -- having a baby to secure citizenship for its parents is an extremely long-term, and uncertain, process.

As for whether we're really seeing what Lindsey Graham called "drop and leave," in which immigrant parents head over and give birth and then head back to their home countries to wait 31 years for citizenship, well, as you might expect, "immigration data and surveys don't provide much support for Graham's notion."

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump took heat when he spoke about "anchor babies" and seemed to relish the fallout from his latest provocation in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. Then Jeb Bush echoed the phrase and found himself on defense — and increasingly exasperated.

OTTAWA — The number of Americans applying for Canadian citizenship jumped slightly after Donald Trump’s election, but numbers are still only half what they were five years ago.
New statistics from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada obtained by the National Post show an average of 400 U.S. citizens put in their applications in each the first four months of this year, compared to an average of 264 per month in 2016 — including a spike in applications in November, the month Trump was elected.

Malkiat Kandola always assumed that when his wife gave birth in India through in-vitro fertilization, their baby would automatically become a Canadian citizen, like the Vancouver-area truck driver himself.
But an immigration officer ruled otherwise, and now the Federal Court of Appeal has upheld that decision in a “groundbreaking” case that raises intriguing questions about the intersection between modern fertility treatment and immigration.

TORONTO — Carrying fraudulent, forged and stolen passports, dozens of Nigerian women began making their way to Toronto not long ago — so many that last year the Canada Border Services Agency identified it as a “trend.”
The women were between the ages of 20 and 35, and were traveling with the help of “facilitation” agents. “The city of Toronto is the main destination for these women because many Nigerians live there,” the CBSA wrote in an Intelligence Bulletin.

OTTAWA — Despite a Canadian Ojibwa bloodline spanning so many years ago that her grandmother can’t put a date on it, Heather Harnois is considered neither aboriginal, nor Canadian.
It means that while she grew up in this country since her teens, the now 25-year-old mother of two can’t get a social insurance number, health-care coverage or child tax benefits even though one of her children was born in Canada.